The distinction between loose and periodic style,[49] which the modern

composition-books have run so tiresomely to death, [Sidenote: _Loose and

periodic style, &c._] and which is really a very unimportant technical

detail, follows; and then we return to those Delilahs of the ancient

rhetorician, Figures—Metaphor once more, Antithesis, Personification,

Hyperbole, &c. Yet even this is more to our purpose than the

demonstration that follows, showing that each kind of Rhetoric,

judicial, deliberative, and declamatory, should have its particular

style. And with this the handling of _lexis_ proper closes, the rather

brief remainder of the book being devoted partly to _taxis_

(_ordonnance_, as Dryden would say), but with special reference to the

needs of the pleader, and partly to a fresh handling of the old

questions of enthymeme, the dispositions of the audience, and the like.

Footnote 49:

In the Greek εἰρομένη, “strung together,” and κατεστραμμένη,

“inter-twisted.”

It will be seen from this that the _Rhetoric_, like the _Poetics_, is

invaluable to the historian of literary criticism, but that, in

[Sidenote: _General effect of the_ Rhetoric.] this case as in that,

literary criticism was only partly the object in the writer’s eye, while

even so far as he had it before him, his views were very largely

limited, and were even in some cases distorted, coloured, and positively

spoilt by certain accidents of place, time, and circumstance. As our

poetical criticism was injuriously affected by the non-existence of the

novelist, so our prose criticism is injuriously affected by the

omnipresence of the orator. As our Poetics were adulterated with ethic

and other things, so our Rhetoric is warped by poetical,

jurisprudential, and other preoccupations. In the first, poetry itself

is not indeed itself a secondary consideration, but divers secondary

considerations ride it, like a company of old men of the sea. In the

second, prose as prose is merely and avowedly a secondary consideration:

it is always in the main, and sometimes wholly, a mere necessary

instrument of divers practical purposes.

To supplement these two general treatises, we could wish for more

particular applications, but we have not got them. We have indeed some

vestiges of work of the kind which are not altogether encouraging. M.

Egger[50] has endeavoured to extract some references to literary

criticism from the general _Problems_; but these deal at best with the

remotest fringes of the topic—why melancholy is so often apparent in

persons of genius, and the like,—questions indeed of the very first

interest, but not of the kind which we are here pursuing. In the extant

fragments, however, which belong or may have belonged to the lost

_Homeric Problems_[51] (or _aporems_ or _zetems_) [Sidenote: _The_

Homeric Problems.] we have metal more attractive. It may be said that

the scholiasts, through whom we have most of these excerpts, were likely

to select them according to the principles which, as we shall see,[52]

governed themselves; but they do not all come through scholiasts, and

yet the complexion of all is more or less uniform. It is that

“ethical-dramatic” complexion, as we may call it, which we have noticed

and shall notice as being the Greek critical “colour”—sometimes to the

utter exclusion, and almost always to the effacement, of actual

criticism. “Why did Agamemnon try experiments on the Greeks? Why did

Odysseus take his coat off? Why is Menelaus represented as having no

female companion? Why [a curial instance of that commentatorial _lues_

which infects the greatest commentators as the least, the most ancient

as the most modern] is Lampetie represented as carrying to the Sun the

news of the slaughter of his oxen, when the Sun sees everything? Why did

the poet make Paris a wretch who was not only beaten in duel, who not

only ran away, but who was specially excited by love immediately

afterwards?”

Footnote 50:

_Op. cit._, p. 194 _sq._

Footnote 51:

_Aristotelis Fragmenta._ Ed. Valentine Rose, Leipsic, 1886. P. 120

_sq._

Footnote 52:

See below, p. 73 _sq._

These are mainly moral questions; but the great philosopher appears to

have carried his solicitude so far as to meddle with military matters.

“Why [somebody had asked], in _Il._ iv. 67-69, are the cavalry

represented as marshalled in front, the cowards in the middle, and the

best infantry behind?” If Aristotle had heard of the “cavalry screen” he

would no doubt have used this _lusis_: as it is, it appears, he

suggested that _prota_ means not “in front” but “on the wings.” And

there is all the quality which endeared Aristotle to the idler side

(which was not the only side by any means) of Scholasticism, in his

condescension to the _aporia_—"If the gods drank nothing but nectar, why

is Calypso spoken of as ‘mixing’ for Hermes? For any ‘mixture,’ even

with water, is something different from nectar; and, therefore, as the

gods do not drink their nectar neat, they do not drink that only." Quoth

the great master (in reply, or at least “Schol. T.” says so), “The word

does not only mean to ‘mix,’ but also simply to ‘pour,’ and this is what

Calypso did.” But why should Calypso herself and Circe and Ino, alone of

goddesses, have the epithet αὐδήεσσα? Even he could not answer that, and

was driven ignominiously to suggest a change of reading.

It is not, I hope, necessary to say that I have no intention of raising

an inept laugh at the Great One. As has been already said, the attitude

of the Greeks to Homer was the attitude of a seventeenth-century Puritan

to the English Scriptures. Every word, almost every letter, had its

reason and its meaning—often many more than one—which had to be

reverently sought out. The analogy, however, itself establishes and

makes clear my point, which is to show that an attitude of this kind

practically excludes pure literary criticism on the one hand, and is

exceedingly unlikely on the other to be taken up by any one who is

strongly bent towards such criticism. We know how Milton, who must have

had an exquisite critical gusto originally, and who never wholly lost

it, was by the cultivation of such an attitude so stunted and checked in

his taste that he could throw the reading of Shakespeare in his dead

king’s face,[53] dismiss the delightful work (hardly inferior to the

best of his own) of the Cavalier poets as “vulgar amorism” and “trencher

fury,” and even when he was not thinking of matter, sink all critical

perspective in his blind craze against rhyme itself. The Homer-worship

of the Greeks on the one hand, and their philosophical preoccupations on

the other, had almost unavoidably a similar effect, though not so bad a

one.

Footnote 53:

I have, I think, seen protests against this statement. The protesters

either do not know Milton’s text, or are of that foolish order of

worshippers which simply shuts its eyes to disagreeable “næves” in the

idol.

Yet the value of the two main documents is so inestimable, that if the

incompleteness and the shortcomings of the _Poetics_, the unavoidable

irrelevance of much of the _Rhetoric_, [Sidenote: _Value of the two main

treatises._] were far greater than they are, our gratitude for both

would still be hard to exaggerate. We have here not merely the first

constituting documents, the earliest charters at once and discussions of

European criticism, but we have them from the hand of a master whose

very weaknesses make him, as compared with some other masters, specially

fit for the office of critic. For the magnificent but almost always _a

priori_ and unpractical metaphysics of Plato, for the shrewd but

personal and rather unfair polemic of Aristophanes, we have a patient

examination of a subject in itself so rich and varied, that one regrets

having to point out that its riches and its variety are not quite

exhaustive. Nowhere, perhaps, does Aristotle sketch the actual _Wesen_

of the man of letters with the dæmonic completeness of the author of the

extraordinary passage attributed to Simylus and quoted formerly; but

that might be, and probably is, a mere flash. His own conclusions, only

sometimes inadequate, very seldom positively erroneous, exhibit the true

modes of criticism as perhaps they have never been exhibited since—with

an equal combination of patience and of power. It is impossible for

Aristotle to do harm, unless his principles are not merely taken too

literally, but augmented and falsified, as was done by the “classical”

criticism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is impossible

for any one who undertakes the office of a critic to omit the study of

him without very great harm. Let us first review briefly what seem to be

the shortcomings, accidental or essential, of his performance, and then

set down what its better parts establish for us as the state of Literary

Criticism at the close of the first and greatest age of Greek

literature, at the close of the first age of the literature of Europe as

a whole.

Partly by mere induction from actual Greek practice, and partly no doubt

also as a genuine result of Greek [Sidenote: _Defects and drawbacks in

the_ Poetics.] taste and literary philosophy, we find the importance and

the character of certain kinds of literature treated with some

extravagance. The importance of Tragedy (as we are enabled to see

clearly by the invaluable though rather unfair aid of the historic

estimate) is altogether exaggerated. It never, as a matter of fact, has

held anything like the position here assigned to it, save twice in two

thousand years and more, on each occasion for a generation or two only.

And there is no reason, in the order and logic of thought, why it should

hold such a position. It is again clearly evident (though we owe the

clearness again not to our own wits, but to time and chance) that part

of this importance is attained by an illegitimate sacrifice, or an

accidental ignoring, of the just claims of other branches of

literature—by making lyric a mere playhouse handmaid, by converting the

stage into a pulpit, and by blocking out, not merely the existence, but

the very possibility, of the prose novel. We can see further that the

glorious achievements of the three great tragedians whom we in part

possess, and of others, probably not much inferior, whom we have almost

wholly lost, seduced their critic into taking what he found in them too

hastily for what ought to be found in all—induced him (aided no doubt by

the Greek taste generally) to exalt Plot, to depress Character, to put

quite undue stress on artificial Unity. Lastly (to keep to the

_Poetics_), we perceive a most unfortunate, though by no means

inexplicable, tendency to give insufficient weight to Metre, and a

decided inclination, on the one hand not to give quite enough importance

to Diction, and on the other to lay down arbitrary rules about it.

Something of the same general tendency manifests itself in

the _Rhetoric_, reinforced by the necessary results of the

Persuasion-theory, [Sidenote: _And in the_ Rhetoric.] and the inordinate

importance given to Oratory. With every possible allowance for the

undoubtedly true plea that Aristotle had no intention of writing a

treatise on Prose Composition generally, but only one on such Prose

Composition as suited the purposes of the Orator, we can see that if he

had written _Prosaics_, to match the _Poetics_, the same limitations

would have appeared. He cannot free himself from the notion that there

is, after all, something derogatory in paying great attention to style:

and it is clear that he does not _wish_ to consider a piece of prose as

a work of art destined, first of all, if not finally, to fulfil its own

laws on the one hand, and to give pleasure on the other. The salutary

but easily exaggerated difference between prose and poetic style is

actually exaggerated here. Above all, the germ of mischief, if not

exactly the mischief itself, is clearly discernible in his account of

the Figures of Speech. It was the drawback, not merely (as is sometimes

said unjustly) of the Platonic philosophy only, but of all Greek

philosophy, to “multiply entities”—to take for granted that because

names are given to things, things must necessarily exist behind names.

And so, instead of regarding these Figures as merely rather loose,

sometimes not inconvenient, but in reality often superfluous, tickets

for certain literary devices and characteristics, there grew up, if not

in Aristotle himself, at any rate in his followers, a tendency to regard

the Figures (which were soon enormously multiplied) as drugs or simples,

existing independently, acting automatically, and to be “thrown in,” as

the physician exhibits his pharmacopœia, to produce this or that

effect.

But enough of this. It is the pleasanter, and, though not in kind, yet

in degree, the more important, business of the historian, to call

attention to the enormous positive [Sidenote: _Merits of both._] advance

which we make with these two books. It is almost the advance from chaos

to cosmos; and we shall find nothing in all the rest of the history

quite to match it, though the resurrection of Criticism with the revival

of learning, and the reformation of it at the Romantic era, come

nearest.

In the first place, we find the great kinds of literature, if not

finally and exhaustively, yet in nearly all their most important points,

discerned, marked off, and as far as possible furnished with

definitions. The most important of all demarcations, that between poetry

and prose, is rather taken for granted than definitely argued out; but

we see that, with whatever hesitations and reservations, it _is_ taken

for granted. So, too, with the kinds of poetry itself. If prose is

inadequately treated, both in general and in its departments, we have

been able to assign something like a reason for that; and a good deal is

actually done in this direction. In other words, the field, the “claim,”

of literary criticism is pretty fairly pegged out.

In the second place, the only sound plan—that of taking actually

accomplished works of art and endeavouring to ascertain how it is that

they give the artistic pleasure—is, with whatever falterings, pretty

steadily pursued. The critic, as Simylus, Aristotle’s own contemporary,

has it, consistently endeavours to “grasp” his subject; and he does

grasp it over and over again.

Let us review our positive gains from this grasp.

That the “Imitation” doctrine of the _Poetics_ is in some respects

disputable need not be denied; and that it lends itself rather easily to

serious misconstruction is certain. [Sidenote: “_Imitation._”] But let

us remember also that it is an attempt—probably the first attempt, and

one which has not been much bettered in all the improvements upon it—to

adjust those proportions of nature and art which actually do exist in

poetry. For by Imitation, whatever Aristotle did mean exactly, he most

certainly did _not_ mean mere copying, mere tracing or plaster-of-Paris

moulding from nature. It is not quite impossible that his at first sight

puzzling objection to Alcidamas' use of the “mirror” as a description of

the _Odyssey_ had something to do with this.[54] A mirror, he would or

might have said, reproduces passively, slavishly, and without selection

or alteration: the artist selects, adapts, adjusts, and if necessary

alters. Now this is the true doctrine, and all deviations from, it,

whether in the shape of realism, impressionism,[55] and the like, in the

one direction, or of adherence to generalised convention on the other,

have always led to mischief soon or late. The artist must be the mime,

not the mirror: the reasonable, discreet, free-willed agent, not the

passive medium. The single dictum that poetry does not necessarily deal

with the actual but with the possible—that it is therefore “more

philosophic,” higher, more universal, than history, though it requires

both extension and limitation, will put us more in the true critical

position than any dictum that we find earlier, or (it may be very

frankly added) than most that we shall find later.[56]

Footnote 54:

It has been objected to this suggestion that the context does not

favour it. Perhaps; but there is often a good deal working in an

author’s mind which the immediate context does not fully show.

Footnote 55:

On Impressionism, see Index.

Footnote 56:

And yet the “corruption” which dogs “the best” followed on this also.

For it was on this dictum that false classicism based its doctrine

that the poet ought not to count the streaks of the tulip—that he must

conventionalise and be general.

So, too, the all-important law that the end of art is pleasure appears

solidly laid down.[57] True, it is not laid down so explicitly as it is

in the _Metaphysics_ and the _Politics_, [Sidenote: _The end of art:

the_ οἰκεία ἡδονή.] but it is assumed throughout, and such assumption

practically more valuable than argument. We have left behind us the

noble wrongheadedness of the Platonic depreciation of pleasure; we are

even past the stage when it might seem necessary to plead humbly and

with bated breath for its _locus standi_. Moreover, the doctrine of the

_oikeia hedone_ not only by implication lays down the end of all art,

but guards (in a fashion which should have been sovereign, though the

haste and heedlessness of men have too often robbed it of its virtues)

against one of the greatest dangers and mistakes of criticism in time to

come. That what we have to demand of a work of literature is pleasure,

and its own pleasure—how simple this seems, how much a matter of course!

Alas! Aristotle himself is not entirely free from the charge of having

sometimes overlooked it, while since his time the great majority of

critical errors are traceable to this very overlooking. The obstinate

ignoring or the captious depreciation of Latin literature by the later

Greeks; the wooden “Arts of Poetry” of the Latins themselves; the scorn

of Chaucer for “rim-ram-ruffing”; of the Renaissance for mediæval

literature; of Du Bellay for Marot; of Harvey for the _Faerie Queene_;

of Restoration criticism for the times before Mr Waller improved our

numbers; of our Romantic critics for Dryden and Johnson; of Mr Matthew

Arnold for French poetry,—all these things, and many others of the same

class, come from the ignoring of the _oikeia hedone_, from the obstinate

insistence that this thing shall be other than it is, that this poet

shall be not himself but somebody else.

Footnote 57:

See for this point especially Professor Butcher’s chapter on this

subject _op. cit._, pp. 197-213.

Again, whatever we may think of the relative importance assigned to plot

and to character by Aristotle, as well as of not [Sidenote: _Theory of

Action_,] a few minor details of his theory of plot or action, there is

no denying the huge lift given to the intelligent enjoyment of

literature by the distinction of these two important elements, and by

the analysis of action if not of character. With the aid of such

refinements we cease, as Dryden has it, to “like grossly,” to accept our

pleasure without distinction of its gradations or inquiry into its

source. The artist no longer aims in the dark; his processes are no

longer mere rules—if rules at all—of thumb. And this is also the

justification, though by no means the sole justification, of such minor

matters as _peripeteia_ and _anagnorisis_, as _desis_ and _lusis_. True,

there is here, as in the case of the Figures, a danger that a convenient

designation _a posteriori_ may be taken as a primæval and antecedent

law. But this is the, in one sense, inevitable, in another very evitable

and gratuitous, danger of all philosophical, scientific, and artistic

inquiry. Fools can never be prevented from taking the means for the end,

the ritual for the worship, the terminology for the spirit; but means

and ritual and terminology are not the less good things for that.

Most of the points hitherto mentioned, though requiring, at the time and

in the circumstances, immense pains, acuteness, and patience to discover

and arrange them, are not beyond [Sidenote: _and of_ ἁμαρτία.] the reach

of somewhat more than ordinary patience, acuteness, and pains. The

theory of ἁμαρτία, as has been shown since by its triumphant

justification in the other great tragedy—the tragedy which seems at

first sight to flout Aristotle’s rules—is a stroke of genius. To this

day it has not been fully accepted; to this day persons, sometimes very

far indeed from fools, persist in confusing the tragic with the merely

painful, with the monstrous, with the sentimental, and so forth.

Aristotle knew better, and has given here a touch of the really higher

criticism—of that criticism which does not waste time over the subject

as such, which does not potter overmuch about details of expression, but

which goes to the root of the matter, to the causes of a certain

pleasure indissolubly associated with literature, if not strictly

literary.

Nor, perhaps, ought we to be least grateful for the remarks on

_lexis_—on poetic style proper. In details we may fail fully [Sidenote:

_Of Poetic Diction._] to understand them, or, understanding, may

disagree with them; and there is no doubt that they are somewhat tinged

with that superior view of style, as something a little irrelevant, a

little vulgar, which appears more fully in the _Rhetoric_, and which,

while it has not entirely disappeared even at the present day, was

naturally rife at a time fresh from the views, and still partly under

the influence, of Socrates and Plato. Here once more we find those

evidences of directness of grasp which are what we seek, especially in

the main description of poetic style, as being on the one hand “clear,”

and yet on the other not “low,” and in the further specification of the

means by which these characteristics are to be secured. More

particularly is this to be noticed in the indication of the ξένον—that

is to say, the unfamiliar—as the means of avoiding “lowness.” Here from

the very outset we see that Aristotle (as Dante far later did, and as

Wordsworth later again did _not_) recognised the necessity of “Poetic

diction,”—the necessity, that is to say, of causing a slight shock, a

slight surprise, in order to bring about the poetic pleasure. And by the

example which he gives of heightening and lowering the effect

alternately, by substituting different words in the same general

context, we see how accurately he had divined the importance of this

diction, whether we may or may not think that the fact is quite

consistent with his exaggerated view of Action. Aristotle’s verbal

criticisms are never, as (to speak frankly) the verbal criticisms of the

ancients too often are, mere _glossography_—mere dictionary work. They

are invariably concerned with, and directed to, the literary value of

the word, and that is what we have to look to.

The positive gains, of or from the _Rhetoric_, are less, but hardly

less. It follows from the special limitations of the plan, which have

already been dealt with, that we have no special theory of prose as

such, and that, not merely some shortcomings, but some positive and

mischievous delusions (such as the confusion of style with delivery),

result from it. But, in divers casual animadversions, he shows us that

if by good fortune he had given us _Prosaics_, the book would, though it

were not more faultless than the _Poetics_, have been quite as valuable.

And as it is, these things supply us with invaluable hints, glimpses,

_points de repère_. The first, and not the least valuable, is the

distinction, used also in the _Poetics_, but there only casually and in

a glance, of words as κύρια and ξένα. Purity, “Amplification,”

Propriety, while they at least suggest those dangers of misapprehended

terminology which have been already dealt with, supply Criticism with

those appropriate classifications, and that necessary plant, without

which no art can exist. And the importance of the rhythm-section cannot

be exaggerated.

Indeed I have sometimes thought that, without extreme arbitrariness or

fancifulness, even the _Pistis_ part of the Rhetoric may be made

subservient to pure criticism. It is not so very far from the effect of

persuading or convincing the hearer to that of producing on the reader

the required effect—it may be of persuasion and conviction, it may be of

information, or it may be simply of that subduing and charming which is

the end and aim of the prose artist as such, whether his name be Burke

or Scott, Browne or Arnold, and whether his nominal division of

literature be history or fiction, criticism or philosophy, things human

or things divine. The “Colours of Good and Evil,” the tendencies of the

readers, the fashions of the day and the passions of all days—these are

things which beyond all dispute will very mightily affect the

appreciation of a book, and which, it may be argued not quite

improperly, condition, in no small degree likewise, its attainment of

its object, its administration of its own pleasure.

However this may be, the point, already more than once touched upon,

that we have now a Literary Criticism, regularly if not fully

constituted, may be regarded as established without need of further

exposition or argument. In some respects, indeed, we have got no further

than Aristotle; we are still arguing on his positions, defending or

attacking his theses. In others we have indeed got a good deal further,

by virtue chiefly of the mere accretion of material and experience. We

have, perhaps, learned (or some of us have) to resign ourselves rather

more to the facts than he, with the enthusiasm of the first stage still

hardly behind him, was able to do. We are less inclined to prescribe to

the artist what he shall do, and more tempted to accept what the artist

does, and see what it can teach as well as how it can please us. But in

the wider sense of critical method we have not got so very far beyond

him in the poetical division. While if we have got beyond him in the

direction of prose (as perhaps we have), the advance has been very late,

and can hardly be said even now to have, by common consent and as a

clear matter of fact, covered, occupied, and reduced to order the

territory on to which it has pushed. Great as are Aristotle’s claims in

almost every department of human thought with which he meddles, it may

be doubted whether in any he deserves a higher place than in this. He is

the very Alexander of Criticism, and his conquests in this field, unlike

those of his pupil in another, remain practically undestroyed, though

not unextended, to the present day.

-----------------------

_Note to p. 42._

Attempts have been made to confine Aristotle’s slighting remarks on

_lexis_ to mere “delivery.” It is true that in the whole passage there

is a certain confusion of the different senses of “elocution.” But in

this sentence Aristotle has just said, τὸ περὶ τὴν λέξιν _not_

ὑπόκρισιν—that is to say, has covered the entire ground which he is

going to discuss. Even if φορτικὸν be violently restricted, by the

help of καὶ before τό, to ὑποκριτική (which occurs further back), the

general drift will remain.

CHAPTER IV.

GREEK CRITICISM AFTER ARISTOTLE. SCHOLASTIC AND MISCELLANEOUS.

DEVELOPMENT OF CRITICISM—THEOPHRASTUS AND OTHERS—CRITICISM

OF THE LATER PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOLS: THE STOICS—THE EPICUREANS:

PHILODEMUS—THE PYRRHONISTS: SEXTUS EMPIRICUS—THE ACADEMICS—THE

NEO-PLATONTSTS—PLOTINUS—PORPHYRY—RHETORICIANS AND

GRAMMARIANS—RHETORIC EARLY STEREOTYPED—GRAMMATICAL AND SCHOLIASTIC

CRITICISM—THE PERGAMENE AND ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOLS—THEIR FOUR

MASTERS—THE SCHOLIASTS ON ARISTOPHANES—ON SOPHOCLES—ON HOMER—THE

LITERARY EPIGRAMS OF THE ANTHOLOGY—THE RHETORIC OF THE SCHOOLS—ITS

DOCUMENTS—THE ‘PROGYMNASMATA’ OF HERMOGENES—REMARKS ON

THEM—APHTHONIUS—THEON—NICOLAUS—NICEPHORUS—MINORS—GENERAL REMARKS ON

THE ‘PROGYMNASMATA’—THE COMMENTARIES ON THEM—THE “ART” OF

HERMOGENES—OTHER “ARTS,” ETC.—TREATISES ON FIGURES—THE DEMETRIAN ‘DE

INTERPRETATIONE’—MENANDER ON EPIDEICTIC—OTHERS—THE ‘RHETORIC’ OR ‘DE

INVENTIONE’ OF LONGINUS—SURVEY OF SCHOOL RHETORIC—THE PRACTICAL

RHETORICIANS OR MASTERS OF EPIDEICTIC—DION CHRYSOSTOM—ARISTIDES OF

SMYRNA—MAXIMUS TYRIUS—PHILOSTRATUS—LIBANIUS, THEMISTIUS, AND JULIAN.

The two remarkable books which have been discussed at length in the

foregoing chapter represent, no doubt, the highest condition, [Sidenote:

_Development of Criticism._] but certainly a condition, of Greek

criticism in the second half of the fourth century before Christ. This

criticism had not, indeed, yet assumed the position of a recognised art.

It was at best a more or less dimly recognised function of Rhetoric,

which on the one side was made to include a great deal which is not

literary criticism at all, and on the other hand was made to exclude

Poetics. But Rhetoric, from this time onwards, more and more tends to

become the Art of Literary Criticism generally, and to absorb Poetics

within itself. So that on the one hand we shall find, among the Latins,

Quintilian, whose strict business is with the strictly oratorical side

of prose rhetoric, dealing freely with poetry, and on the other, among

the Greeks, Longinus (whose main subject is poetry), not hesitating to

draw examples from prose. Nor may it be wrong to discern in this awkward

separation of the two parts of criticism, and the yet more awkward

adulteration of prose criticism with matters really foreign to it, an

unconscious—nay, an unwilling—recognition of fact. For Poetry deals

first of all with form, Prose with matter; though the matter can never

be a matter of entire indifference to Poetry, and the form becomes of

more and more importance as we ascend from the lower to the higher

prose.

After Aristotle we fall back, for the ages immediately following, on the

dreary and perilous chaos of fragments and titles. [Sidenote:

_Theophrastus and others._] From the extant work, indeed, of his chief

disciple, Theophrastus, we could guess that he dealt largely in

Rhetoric. It is no rash conjecture that the famous _Characters_

themselves were intended, after a fashion of which we have but too many

other examples, to provide orators and writers with cut-and-dried types

on which to base their rhetorical appeals. Nay, we have titles as well

as fragments of works of his bearing on the subject,—_on Style_, _on

Comedy_,—but nothing whereon to base a real estimate.[58] And what is

true of Theophrastus is true of hundreds of others. Only those who are

fond of the pastime of letting down buckets into empty wells can derive

the slightest satisfaction from knowing, or at least being informed,

that Aristotle of Cyrene wrote a _Poetic_ of which we have nothing, and

Phanias of Eresus a work _On Poets_ of which we have a couple of

scraps.[59] It is certain that a very considerable literature, at least

ostensibly critical, existed, dating from the third and later centuries.

Footnote 58:

As in other cases, Theophrastus has been criticised very largely on

rather slim vouchers. For instance, the quotation (in Cic. Orat., 39)

on the strength of which Mr. Nettleship, _Lectures and Essays_, ii.

47, speaks of him complimentarily, strikes me, I confess, as but a

commonplace remark enough. It is that by Herodotus and Thucydides,

“History was first stirred up to speak more freely and ornately.”

Footnote 59:

See for more, Egger, p. 347 _sq._

Two writers, later in time, not of much critical fertility but of some

interest, will illustrate for us the attitude of two Greek [Sidenote:

_Criticism of the later Philosophical Schools: The Stoics._]

philosophical schools to criticism. None of these schools except the

Peripatetics (and in a negative sort of way the Platonists) deserved

very well of our Tenth Muse. The Stoics—when they were not in that mood

of disdainful tolerance which is represented by Epictetus' doctrine of

“the Inn,”[60] of less tolerance still and more disdain as shown by

Marcus Aurelius,[61] or of affected contempt, almost pure and simple, as

in Seneca,[62] which was their later attitude—seem in their earlier days

to have devoted themselves with great vigour to grammatical

investigations, and at all times to have affected the allegorical style.

But we cannot wonder that they spent no pains on investigating, still

less that they spent no pains on championing, that mixed intellectual

and sensual pleasure which is the business and the glory of literature.

Footnote 60:

This doctrine, best known to English readers, perhaps, from Mr

Arnold’s not quite fair application of it to Théophile Gautier, is of

much more general application in the original (_Enchiridion_, cap.

52). Man being represented as a voyager to a far country, all

occupations save duty and philosophy are really mere “inns on the

journey,” pleasant perhaps for a night, but not good to stay in.

“Eloquence” is specially dwelt on as one of these “inns.”

Footnote 61:

Who thanks Heaven (i. 17) that he did not make more progress in

rhetoric and poetry.

Footnote 62:

_V. infra_, bk. ii. p. 245 _sq._

The attitude, however, of their principal antagonists is all the more

surprising. The Cynic vulgarity and insolence could not be expected to

busy itself profitably with letters, and, as we shall see shortly, the

ancient Pyrrhonists have at least left us nothing to show that they

could combine with their _Que sais-je?_ on philosophical points, the

keen literary enjoyment and the discriminating literary appreciation of

their great modern champion. But the attitude of the Epicureans to

literature is one of the most surprising things in the history of

ancient philosophy.

One might have supposed, not merely that a Hedonist philosophy would

apply itself most joyfully and energetically to the investigation and

the vindication of one of the greatest of all sources of _ataraxia_ and

_aponia_,[63] but that it would do [Sidenote: _The Epicureans:

Philodemus._] so with all the more vigour as thus vindicating itself

from the common charge of esteeming only sensual pleasures. Yet, though

the scanty wreckage of original Epicurean writing warns us not to be too

peremptory, there is absolutely no evidence that Epicurus, or any of his

followers, took this side. Nay, the whole evidence available is

distinctly against any such supposition. Perhaps we could have no

stronger testimony to the reluctance with which antiquity took the view

of literature as a pleasure-giver, or rather to the rarity with which

such a view even presented itself. If we were here indulging further in

speculation, it might not be improper to suggest that the atomic and

necessitarian theory of Epicurus deprived the operations of the artist

of half their interest. But this would be to travel out of bounds. It is

enough to say that Epicurus is accused of slighting critical discussion

altogether, that his chief disciple Metrodorus appears to have written a

book on poetry which was a general attack on it as a useless and futile

thing, and that the fragments of Philodemus of Gadara, which have been

salvaged from Herculaneum, go to support the same idea.

Footnote 63:

Freedom from trouble and pain; the former, especially, being the

technical term for the Epicurean _nonchalance_.

At the same time, we must not lay too much stress on this. The charge

against Epicurus and Metrodorus rests, mainly if not wholly, on the

testimony of Plutarch, who, as we shall see, took the merely ethical

view of literature, and is found in that treatise of the _Moralia_ in

which he sets himself to prove that Epicureanism cannot even give the

pleasure at which it aims And the tolerably abundant fragments of

Philodemus[64] are, even after all the pains spent on them, in such a

chaos that only extremely temerarious arguers will do more than take a

vague inference from them. The remark which the latest editor of this

puzzle has made about one book—"It is difficult to know whether

Philodemus or his opponent is speaking"—applies, I should say, to almost

all. Not only is this the case; but we can see, with hardly any danger

of mistake, that if this difficulty were removed, and if we had the

whole treatise fully and fairly written out before us, our state would

be very little the more gracious. A very great, perhaps the greater,

part of it seems to have been occupied with the discussion of one of

those endless technical questions—"Is Rhetoric an _art_ or is it

not?"—in which antiquity seems to have taken an interest, the utter

unintelligibility of which to us is only tempered by the wise reflection

that plenty of our questions to-day will seem equally “ashes, cinders,

dust” to students two thousand years hence. The real and solid

conclusion is, once more, that we have not lost nearly so much as we

seem to have lost by the disappearance of these endless treatises on

rhetoric and on poetry. It is possible, of course, that one in a

thousand of them might have been another Περὶ Ὕψους: it is far more

probable that not one would have been anything of the kind.

Footnote 64:

Ed. Ludhaus. Leipsic, 1892.

If Acatalepsy[65], the doxy of the Pyrrhonists, has been somewhat more

fortunate in one way than her close connection [Sidenote: _The

Pyrrhonists: Sextus Empiricus._] the Ataraxia of the Garden, she has

paid for that fortune in another. Except in the magnificent poem of

Lucretius, we have no complete document of Epicurean philosophy, and

there the philosophy is utterly eclipsed, burnt up, washed away, by the

blaze and the torrent of the poetry. No such disturbing element enters

into the two very businesslike expositions of philosophic doubt which we

possess in the _Pyrrhonic Sketches_ and the _Against the Dogmatists_ of

Sextus Empiricus.[66] But, if the one writer is almost too much of a

poet, the other is very much too little of a prose writer. Scepticism

has assuredly no necessary connection with dulness, though it may have a

good deal with levity. But Sextus Empiricus is one of the dullest

writers of antiquity. There is not a spark, not a glimmer even, in his

phrase, which is chiefly made up of the most damnable iteration of

technical terms; his arrangement is desultory; and beyond a raking

together of all the arguments, good, bad, and indifferent, for general

or particular agnosticism, that he has read or can think of, he seems to

find it impossible to go. At the same time, modern writers have found by

no means a bad subject for such handling in the contradictions, the

inconsistencies, the ineptitudes of literary critics: the eighteenth

century especially, from the writings of the great Scriblerus to the

_Pursuits of Literature_, is full of such things. And if there is little

of the kind (for there is something) in Sextus, we may not improperly

set it down to the fact that he found little to fasten upon.

Footnote 65:

The incomprehensibleness of things; the impossibility of certain

knowledge.

Footnote 66:

Ed. Bekker. Berlin, 1842.

What he gives is contained in three of the four last sections of

_Against the Dogmatists_, those dealing with Grammarians, Rhetoricians,

and Musicians respectively. In the last, which is the shortest, I do not

know that the example of childish cavilling quoted by Egger—that a bard

was set to look after Clytæmnestra, and Clytæmnestra murdered her

husband—is more or less childish than the solemn sophism (not quoted by

him) with which the chapter and the book closes, to the effect that as

there is no “time”[67] in the wide sense, so there can be no

“time”—feet, rhythms, measures—in the narrow.

Footnote 67:

This is proved in the usual fallacy-fashion: Time must be past,

present, or future. Admittedly, neither past nor future time _is_;

present time is either divisible or indivisible, to each of which

there is an objection.

The section on Rhetoric is also short, and turns almost wholly upon the

old _aporia_ whether Rhetoric is an art or not, with others of a similar

kind.

As for the grammatical section, that does touch us nearer; indeed, when

Sextus divides Grammar into two parts, adopting for the second the

definition of Dionysius of Thrace, that “Grammar is the knowledge[68] of

what is said by the poets and prose writers,”[69] we seem to be almost

at home. But in this expectation we should be counting without our host,

the sceptical physician, and, indeed, without antiquity generally. We

have first quibbling _à perte de vue_ about _empeiria_, then other

definitions, then considerations of the mere grammatical elements. Only

after a long time does Sextus come to the grammarian’s business of

_interpreting_ the poets and prose writers. And then he not only seems

to be dealing with men of straw, but answers them with, as Luther would

say, a most “stramineous” argument. Poetry, it seems, they say (and it

is fair to Sextus to admit that Plutarch and other people do in effect

say this) is useful as containing wise saws and philosophical instances:

grammar is necessary to understand poetry: therefore, grammar is good.

He does not care actually to attack poetry, but observes that, in so far

as it provides matter useful or necessary for life, it is always clear,

and wants no grammatical exposition, while (662-663) whatsoever deals in

unfamiliar stories, or is enigmatically expressed, is useless, so that

grammar can do nothing useful with it. A subsequent contention, that

grammarians know neither the matter nor the words of literature, though

a little sweeping, might have chapter and verse given for it in the case

of at least some critics. But when Sextus establishes his first point by

triumphing over the poor grammarians for not having perceived in a

Homeric epithet an allusion to a pharmaceutical property, and in

Euripides a point of clinical practice (671), he is either making a

heavy joke or is utterly off the critical standpoint.

Footnote 68:

ἐμπειρία.

Footnote 69:

συγγραφεῖς. The opposition is as old as Plato, though συγγραφεὺς is

sometimes limited to “historian.”

A third school, in its various stages, has perhaps a better, if a vague,

repute for attention to literature. Perverse as was in [Sidenote: _The

Academics._] many respects the attitude of Plato to the subject in

detail, it was impossible (or might have seemed impossible) that his

doctrine of _psychagogia_,[70] and the magnificent eulogies bestowed in

the _Ion_ and the _Phædrus_ on that poetry towards which he is elsewhere

so severe, should not induce his followers—at whatever great a

distance—to do likewise. It seems, however, to have been found easier by

the earlier Academics to follow the crotchet than the enthusiasm, and

many of the puerile and servile quibbles to which we have referred as

appearing in Sextus Empiricus seem to be of Academic origin.

Footnote 70:

The “leading of the soul” to truths, and gifts, and pleasures.

Aristotle likewise adopts the word: and indeed it contains in itself

the soul of criticism, though in Plato himself it sometimes has an

unfavourable meaning, of “allurement,” “seduction.”

The Neo-Platonists, at least, might be looked to with some hope. Their

spirit at any rate was not negative, and they seem, [Sidenote: _The

Neo-Platonists._] as a rule, to have been diligent and eager students of

literature. But, on the other hand, their tendency towards mysticism,

and also the strong colour which their philosophy took from the East,

made them especially susceptible to the temptations of allegory, which,

as we have seen and shall see, was a Delilah of criticism in almost all

its stages in Greece. And when they escaped this they nearly always

succumbed to the other temptations of merely grammatical and textual

inquiries, or to those of an abstract and theoretical æstheticism, which

leaves the actual estimation of literature as literature out of sight.

Thus, from the two great chiefs of the school, Plotinus and Proclus, we

have short treatises on the Beautiful—by Proclus [Sidenote: _Plotinus._]

in the form of a commentary (not complete) on the _First Alcibiades_ of

Plato, while the tractate of Plotinus[71] attaches itself somewhat less

closely to the _Hippias_. From the very first this latter keeps rigidly

and laboriously to the abstract. Beauty, we are told, specially affects

the sense of sight, but the ear perceives it in eloquence, poetry, and

music. It is also in emotions, in virtue, in science. Is all this

derived from one principle or from many? What is it, or what are they?

But as there is both essential and accidental beauty, we must first

settle what the attractive principle is. A shrewd question, and one

which, if followed out in the proper direction, would lead straight to

the best criticism of literature; but, unluckily, Plotinus does not so

follow it.

Footnote 71:

_Enn._, vi. 1. Separately printed with Proclus, in an edition which I

have not seen, by Creuzer, in 1814. M. Théry included a French

translation in the rather capriciously selected but interesting

appendix of _pièces justificatives_ appended to his _Histoire des

Opinions_; and I believe there is another.

He proceeds to examine and expose the difficulties attending the

proposition that beauty comes mainly or chiefly from proportion of

parts. There must rather, he holds, be in the soul some faculty of

perceiving the divine quality, whether manifested in proportion or in

anything else. The beauty of bodily substances depends on their affinity

with the divine: the beauty of things not recognised by the senses

depends on their identity with it. In yet other words, and from a yet

other point of view, Beauty is Good, Ugliness is Evil: the attraction of

the first pair, the repulsion of the second, easily explains itself.

As for the organ wherewith beauty is perceived, it is the soul: the

senses only apprehend shadow-beauties—reflections and suggestions of

reality. The faculty must be cultivated; it must be refined by high

thinking and plain living, and at last it will see that, though Good and

Beauty are one, yet Beauty is in a lower sphere than Good—is, in fact,

but an imitation of it.

All this is not merely Platonic—it is itself beautiful and good: it is

noble, it is true, it deserves everything that can possibly be said in

its favour. But for the actual purposes of literary criticism it is but

as a sweet song in a foreign language. It will hardly help us in the

very least degree to distinguish Shelley from the most estimable of

minor poets, or Thackeray from the least estimable of minor novelists.

It does, by way of illustration, touch literary criticism once itself,

for it refers to “the admirable allegory” which represents Ulysses as

using all his efforts to withdraw himself from the enchantments of Circe

and the passion of Calypso, resisting all the enticements of bodily

beauty and delight. To the greatest as to the least of Neo-Platonists

the allegorical explanation is itself Circe, itself Calypso; and instead

of endeavouring to escape from it, he willing meets it willing, and

abides contented in those ever-open arms.

This is especially seen in the writings, known or attributed, of the

most industrious and variously accomplished, if not the [Sidenote:

_Porphyry._] most gifted, of the Neo-Platonists, Porphyry. Porphyry has

to his credit two documents which, in title and subject, are undoubtedly

literary, the _Quæstiones Homericæ_ and the _De Antro Nympharum_; while

some would take away from Plutarch, and give to him, the work on Homer’s

Life and Poems, which has undergone the indignity of being spoken of as

“miserable” by M. Egger,[72] while, on the other hand, Archbishop

Trench[73] gives the author, whoever he was, what would, if deserved, be

the very high praise of having thus early “recognised very distinctly

the charm which rhyme has for the ear.” If this were so, I should be

inclined to put him together with Philostratus, as having at least

stumbled on a great critical truth. But perhaps the words will hardly

bear the burden, for the writer, quoting μελισσάων ἀδινάων ...

ἐρχομενάων, adds, “These words and their likes add much grace and

pleasure to the expression.”[74] And unluckily, the remark occurs only

in an examination of Homer _by figures_, where this is taken as

representing _homoeoteleuton_. Now, _homoeoteleuton_, though it is a

sort of poor relation of rhyme, belongs to that branch of the family

which more rightly bears the name of Jingle. However this may be, the

treatise, as a whole, would scarcely add to the reputation either of

Plutarch or of Porphyry.

Footnote 72:

_Op cit. plur._, p. 484.

Footnote 73:

_Sacred Latin Poetry_ (ed. 2, London, 1864), p. 30, _note_.

Footnote 74:

μάλιστα προστίθησι τῷ λόγῳ χάριν καὶ ἡδονήν.

The two more certain works, on the other hand, belong only to those

outskirts of our subject which have been so often characterised. The

_Questions_[75] busy themselves almost wholly with the text and the

meaning, though it is fair to say that Porphyry is much above the usual

scholiast in sense and judgment, and sometimes approaches criticism

proper. This approach, however, is generally, if not always, displayed

in the same direction as that of Aristotle’s extant _Homeric Problems_

(_v. supra_, p. 49 _sq._) and of many of the remarks made by the Master

in the twenty-fifth chapter of the _Poetics_—the direction, namely, of

solving material _aporiæ_, such as Aristotle’s own comment on ζωρότερον

κέραιε, and Porphyry’s[76] on the demurrer why Penelope did not send

Telemachus for aid to her own parents? The process, in short,

illustrates frequently, if not always, that curious _swerving_ from the

purely literary question which we so often notice. Almost any magnet is

strong enough to draw the commentator away from that question. He will

even ask, and gravely answer, the question, Why men, but not gods, are

represented as washing their hands before dinner?

Footnote 75:

Ed. Schrader, 2 vols., Leipsic, 1890.

Footnote 76:

For this and the subsequent oddity see Schrader (_op. cit._, _Ad

Odysseam_), pp. 40-43. The subject is dealt with, from another point

of view, in a monograph by M. Carroll, _Aristotle’s Poetics in the

Light of the Homeric Scholia_, Baltimore, 1895.

The _De Antro Nympharum_,[77] on the other hand, is the principal

example, in intermediate times, of that allegorical interpretation or

misinterpretation which, unless kept severely in order, is sure to usurp

the place of the criticism to which it can at best be ancillary. From no

other members of the school, so far as I know, have we anything that

comes even as near to criticism as this.

Footnote 77:

My copy of this is the separate edition of Van Goens (Trajecti ad

Rhenum, 1765). It can hardly be necessary to say that the subject is

the famous and beautiful opening of _Od._ xiii. As for the

treatment—the cave, the double entrance, the nymphs, the vases, the

bees, are all allegorised to the _n_^{th}, pressed to death, broken on

the wheel, sublimated to a non-essence in the Neo-Platonic laboratory.

But the Schools have led us far from our immediate context and subject,

the literature of the three centuries after Aristotle. [Sidenote:

_Rhetoricians and Grammarians._] From all this literature it cannot be

said that one single text, of undoubted genuineness and substantive

importance, preserves for us the critical views of the something like

three hundred years which passed between the philosopher’s death in 322

B.C. and the flourishing of Dionysius of Halicarnassus in the third

decade before Christ. Two things, however, may be said to be, in a round

and general manner, ascertained as having either taken definite form or

come into existence during this time; and though both are conditioned

very uncomfortably by our lack of texts, they are both of the utmost

importance to the history of Criticism, and they can both be spoken of,

with caution, indeed, but with some general induction not too far from

certainty. The one is the establishment of the teaching of Rhetoric in a

form which underwent no very important modification for five or six

hundred years, and no absolute revolution for fifteen or sixteen

hundred. The other is the birth of Verbal Criticism—of the kind of

criticism which long arrogated to itself something like a primary title

to the name, and has, in the same or other forms, not yet quite given up

its pretensions—under the auspices of Aristarchus and the great

Alexandrian school of commentators. The importance assigned to these can

be justified from the fact, whether that fact be or be not in itself

distasteful, that of such ancient criticism as remains to us, by far the

larger part is busied rather in these two directions than in that of

Criticism proper. On the one hand, we have the huge body of work, not

even so quite completely collected, which fills the seven thousand pages

of Walz’s _Rhetores Græci_, and the less voluminous thesaurus which does

duty for Roman effort on the same lines. On the other, we have the body

(whether as great or greater its more scattered condition does not

permit one to say certainly) of Scholia. And we constantly find—to our

grief—that the better writers (of whom, at least in some cases,

something survives to us) are apt to stray, in one or other of these

directions, from the proper path of that criticism which, though it does

not neglect either Rhetorical method or verbal minuteness, yet busies

itself mainly with far other questions, asking, “Is this writer or this

work, on the whole, good or bad as work or writer?” “What variety of the

poetical or prosaic pleasure does he or it give?” “What are the sources,

so far as they are traceable, of this pleasure?” “What is the special

idiosyncrasy of the author or the book?” “What place do both hold, in

relation to other books or authors of the same or other times, in the

same or other languages?” It will not be otiose if we attempt to sketch,

from the extant examples, what the Rhetorician and the Scholiast, as a

rule, actually did, what aim they seem to have set before them, what

connection with the best literary criticism they seem to have had.

We need not very greatly disturb ourselves at the fact that, of complete

Rhetorical treatises, we have probably nothing between Aristotle and

Dionysius, if even that attributed to the latter be genuine; and that

modern investigations refuse indorsement to the genuineness of the _De

Interpretatione_ attributed to Demetrius Phalereus,[78] which would, if

it were genuine, be the oldest we have. For, from myriad petty

indications, there is no reasonable reason for believing that a genuine

_Rhetoric_ by Demetrius would be very different from that which is now

attributed to some later Alexandrian writer. Rhetoric, as we have seen,

had from the first been hampered by special attributions and

limitations; nor (as so often happens in history) did these limitations

cease, at any rate to some extent, to work when their causes ceased to

exist. The sentry in St James’s Park, who continued to be posted till

the other day at the garden-door of a certain house, because (as it was

found out long after the reason had been forgotten) some Royal or

Ambassadorial personage had been quartered there for a time generations

earlier, was a great and admirable allegory—and in wiser days than our

own would have remained undisturbed as such. Moreover, though the

political importance of Rhetoric decreased, and the assemblies of Greece

became mere parish councils; though the law courts went more and more

either by fixed codes or personal influence; though philosophy became

_phluaria_; Rhetoric, having once, with unconscious cunning, [Sidenote:

_Rhetoric early stereotyped._] got Education practically into her hands,

retained that powerful engine and all the influence that it confers. It

would seem however that, pretty early, a very mischievous process of

stereotyping took place. Grammar and Logic, the companions of Rhetoric,

were to some extent saved by their having positive things to deal

with—the facts of speech and the Laws of Thought. But Rhetoric dealt

with fashion, opinion, etiquette: and except when, in the hands of

superior persons like Dionysius and Longinus among the Greeks, like

Quintilian among the Latins, it shook itself free and became the

Literary Criticism that it ought to be, it became a rather parlous

thing. It early developed the disease of technical jargon, in that

specially dangerous form—recognisable perhaps in times nearer our own

than those of Demetrius or even of Hermogenes—the form of giving

wantonly new meanings to common words. It elaborated an arbitrary and

baneful system of “common form”—of schemes, and types, and conventional

schedules, into which, by a minimum of intellectual exertion, the orator

or writer could throw what he wanted. On the one hand, it constantly

increased and multiplied the Figures; on the other hand, it invented a

system of things called _staseis_—"states of the case"—which attempted

to classify and stereotype the matter of the orator’s brief, just as the

Figures classified and stereotyped his oratorical means of dealing with

it. In other words, and to adopt the terms of literary criticism itself,

the stop-watch ruled supreme. In the more technical examples of

Rhetorical art, such as those of the far later but characteristic

Hermogenes, it is often difficult to find anything which touches

literary criticism at all. Only the greater men, as has been said, were

ever able to break free; and the sort of scorn with which they speak of

their predecessors—Quintilian of the figure-mongers, Longinus of

Cæcilius—is invaluable (especially as neither Quintilian nor Longinus

seems to have been at all a bad-blooded person) as showing how irksome

the traditional Rhetoric was felt to be by men who had in them the sense

of literature.

Footnote 78:

_V. infra_, p. 103.

The Scholiast, on the other hand, if of a less traceable creation, is of

almost equally old lineage, and he may conveniently [Sidenote:

_Grammatical and Scholiastic criticism._] be dealt with, in such detail

and variety as he requires, before the more formidable bulk of the

School Rhetoricians occupies us. We have already seen, in glimpses, that

the restless curiosity of the Greeks took very early to purely

philological inquiry, to the separation and naming of parts of speech,

to the codification of grammar. And it was impossible that a people

furnished with such an admirable language and so early developing

accomplishment, both in music and poetry, should not, at a stage

proportionately much earlier than in other cases, discover and prosecute

inquiries as to Prosody. To this day, Greek grammar is, to some tastes

at any rate, the only grammar which is not too arbitrary or too jejune

to excite any interest. The wonderful symmetry of Greek accidence, the

mazy but by no means unplanned intricacy of Greek syntax, have had power

to fascinate schoolboys who, both at that age and later, were merely

bored by the arbitrary niceties of Latin, and refused to accept the

attempts that have been made to impose an appearance of system on the

antinomianism and the compromises of English. As for Greek metre, though

the subject has not the historic interest—the interest of great yet not

inexplicable changes—which belongs to the prosody of the two other

languages just brought into comparison, it is capable of much more exact

handling. And, in particular, the peculiar structure of Greek choric

verse, that hitherto unparalleled blend which unites much of the liberty

of prose with the ordered charm of poetry, gave practically endless

occupation to intellects which would soon have been satiated with the

comparative monotony of Latin, and which might have recoiled before the

apparent lawlessness of English.

It is not very certain at what precise time these two studies (or, if we

take prosody to be a part of grammar, this joint-study) began to occupy

considerable numbers of professional students. But it must have been a

tolerably early one, and by degrees the grammarian in his pure function,

the scholiast in his applied one, became recognised personages.

The profession, so to speak, may be said (according to the common

tradition, but with sufficient justice) to have been formally

constituted in the third and second centuries [Sidenote: _The Pergamene

and Alexandrian Schools._] before Christ, under the patronage of the

successors of Alexander at the courts of Pergamus and Alexandria. To

these schools belong the famous names of Zenodotus (the earliest, and

belonging partly to the third century), of Crates of Mallos, and, above

all, of Aristarchus. It is, perhaps, only at first sight surprising

that, famous as the names are, they are for the most part names only.

Not one single work, nor even any substantial passage of a work, by any

of the three masters just mentioned, or by any of their contemporaries

or near pupils, has come down to us, save in the case of one pupil of

Zenodotus, more famous even than his master, the grammarian

Aristophanes. Criticism indeed, it has been said, has, of all literature

that is really literature, the most precarious existence. Still, we know

a good deal about them from citations, allusions, and discussions in

later writers, while of Aristophanes of Byzantium we have a fairly

considerable collection of fragments.

The disappearance of texts, always lamentable, if not actually

irremediable, is here more to be regretted than anywhere, because there

is fair reason for believing that, at any rate, some of these

grammarians were critics in the full and proper sense of the term. By

far the greater part of their labours appears to have been directed to

Homer, and there is no reason to contradict the general, the received,

opinion that while the Pisistratean redaction is not quite certain in

fact, and almost entirely unknown in nature, while it is certain that

even Aristotle had before him a text differing remarkably from our own,

the Alexandrian grammarians practically produced that which we have. It

is accordingly from this time that the famous and formidable

craft—science it would no doubt call itself—of textual criticism may be

said to date; and from our information, second-hand as it is, we are

enabled to recognise some types of textual critics which are not, and

are never likely to be, obsolete. In Aristophanes, the spelling

reformer, the practical originator of accents, it is not rash to see the

great exemplar of the critic [Sidenote: _Their Four Masters._] of the

purely philological kind, who busies himself with those literary matters

which are most remote from literature proper, though no doubt he is a

very valuable person when he is kept in his proper place. Zenodotus

stands in the same relation to the lexicographical critic, and seems

also to have been the father of all those who by “a critical text” mean

a text arranged at their own discretion, passages being expunged,

transposed, or corrected, not in accordance with any testimony as to

what the author did write, but according to the critic’s idea of what he

ought to have written—in other words, what the critic himself would have

liked him to write, or would, if he could, have written in his place.

Aristarchus appears to have deserved the primacy generally accorded to

him by being more wisely conservative than Zenodotus, and less tempted

to stick in the letter than the lesser Aristophanes; as well as by a

general display, in his more literary remarks, of critical faculty

greater than was possessed by either, and infinitely greater than that

of the average scholiast. While the still earlier, and at least equally

famous or notorious, name of Zoilus is of itself sufficient to show that

the critic who is merely or mainly a snarler can at least boast that he

is of an ancient house.

It would be rash to deny, and even unjust to doubt, that some of these

famous critics, as well as others less known or not known at all,

practised criticism in its best and widest sense, regulating texts by a

sanely conservative acuteness, interpreting meanings and purpose with

adaptable but not too fantastic compliance, annotating matter with

intelligent erudition, and even achieving, as best they could, the

explanation of the nature and success of their author’s literary appeal,

and the placing of his work in the general map of literary history. Nay,

there were actually, though our remains of them are but tantalising,

literary historians of tolerably old date. But it is possibly neither

presumptuous nor ungenerous to suspect that, if we had the whole works

of Aristarchus before us, we should find in him (allowing for his

grammatical tendency) at least as much shortcoming as we found, probably

far more than we found, in Aristotle from the rhetorical side. For the

old disability—the absence of comparison, the possession [Sidenote: _The

Scholiasts on Aristophanes._] of not even a second literature for

purposes of contrast—must have weighed upon Aristarchus just as it

weighed upon Aristotle. And it is at any rate not uncharitable, it is

merely a plain recognition of actual fact, to say that on the great mass

of Greek grammatical criticism, as it comes down to us in the so-called

scholiasts, the curse of the letter does undoubtedly rest. Nothing, for

instance, is more curious than to read, from the critical point of view,

the Scholia on Aristophanes,[79] some of which are undoubtedly among the

oldest that we have on any author, except Homer. The commentators are

irreproachable in noting the slightest grammatical peculiarity; they map

out the metres with religious care. Difficulties of mere meaning they

tackle with the same imperturbable seriousness, the same grave and

chaste attention to duty, whether the _crux_ is a recondite “excursion

into the _blue_,” or a mystery of the kitchen and the fishmarket, or a

piece of legal technicality. They give careful and useful abstracts and

arguments, dates now and then, sometimes not contemptible scraps of

literary history. But of literary criticism proper, of appreciation of

Aristophanes' ever fresh wit, of his astonishing intellectual alertness,

of his wide knowledge, of his occasional bursts of magnificent poetry,

there is not one word. You may spend hours, days, weeks almost over the

huge collection; but the result will only be that, for this special

purpose, page after page will be drawn blank.

Footnote 79:

I do not pretend to have extensively consulted or “compulsed” the

learned and admirable labours of Mr Rutherford on this subject. But I

have taken care to refresh and confirm old familiarity with Dindorf’s

edition by reading that of Dübner with the additions in the Didot

collection.

But it may be said, “The scholia on Aristophanes are confessedly[80]

poor in literary annotation. Why do you take them [Sidenote: _On

Sophocles._] as an example? Why not take in preference, or give in

addition, one at least of those collections of scholia which the same

authorities[81] accept as richer in the matter?” Very well: let us take

those on Sophocles,[82] the admittedly richest of all. It will—or

certainly may—seem at the opening as if a more promising “pocket” had

been struck, for the first annotation on the _Ajax_ is busy with the

arrangement and contents of the prologue, and its relation to what

follows; and there is a good deal of similar matter throughout the

commentary on this play at least. But when we come to read it in detail

we find that its criticism is, at its widest departure from the mere

explanatory _supellex_ of the ordinary scholiast, almost purely

_theatrical_. For instance, here is the note on 66: “The introduction of

Ajax is persuasive; for thus the pathos of the tragedy becomes greater,

the spectators perceiving him now out of his mind, and a little later in

his senses.”

Footnote 80:

See the useful and interesting, if rather widely titled, paper of Ad.

Trendelenburg, _Grammaticorum Græcorum De Arte Tragicâ Judiciorum

Reliquiæ_. Bonn: 1867.

Footnote 81:

Ibid., p. 1.

Footnote 82:

Ed. P. N. Papageorgius. Leipsic: 1888.

And again on 112: “He speaks as in other respects yielding to the

goddess but in this opposing her, and the poet hence shows his

disposition to be haughty (since the spectators are much disposed in

favour of Ajax by his misfortunes, and all but wroth with the poet),

that Ajax may seem to suffer justly from his want of submission to the

divinity.”

We might quote the long and curious note on 134 as to the composition of

the chorus from Salaminians; the criticism of the expostulation of the

said chorus with the conduct of the Greeks to Ajax, 158; the still odder

note on 201, as of one expounding to a very little school-child how

Tecmessa and the Chorus exchange information; the formal explanation, on

342, why Teucer is introduced later than Tecmessa, and of the hero’s

language to his captive mistress; the rationale, 770, of the arrival of

the messenger; the description of the scene at 815. But the mere

enumeration of such things as these should, without the expenditure of

more space, be sufficient to show what the character of this annotation

is. It is not so very different in places from the elaborate stage

directions with which, for the last century, some playwrights,

especially German and Scandinavian, have been wont to assist the

imagination of their readers or hearers, or their own dramatic

incapacity; and even when it goes beyond this, it hardly ever goes

further than the explanation and justification of the _action_.

The same is, I think, almost without exception the character of the

relatively considerable number of observations of a critical kind which

I have noted on other plays. Sometimes they are actual directions to the

actor—who is told on _Electra_ 823 that he “ought, at the moment of

uttering the cry, to look up to heaven, and raise his hands”—sometimes,

as on _Œdipus Tyrannus_ 141, the note is made that “this will stir the

theatre.” But always, I think,—certainly in the vast majority of

cases,—the critic abstains, with a rigidity which can only come from

deliberate purpose (and this is unlikely), or from unconsciousness that

the thing is likely to be required of him, from any comments on the

beauty or appropriateness of the verse, on the idiosyncrasy of the

phrase or its agreement with others, on the Sophoclean characteristics

of the poetry, or even (except from the pure stage point of view) on the

evolution of the characters. He has evidently learnt his Aristotle, and

looks at the action first: he has not learnt him with a sufficiently

independent intelligence to remember that even Aristotle does not look

at the action only.

But the case becomes strongest when we come to what should be the

stronghold of literary criticism in this quarter—the [Sidenote: _On

Homer._] Scholia[83] on Homer himself. Here we have the thrice—nay,

thirty times—decocted essence of the critical study of generations,

centuries, almost millennia (certainly more than one millennium), of

study of the writer who entered into Greek life, Greek thought, Greek

education, as no book, save the English Bible, has ever entered into the

life, the thought, the education, of any other country. We have it in

ample bulk, of all ages, presented in that special fashion of comment on

comment, of annotated annotation, which, whatever may be its merits or

whatever may be its drawbacks, is at any rate suited to draw out

examination of the common subject from almost every point of view.

Footnote 83:

Ed. Dindorf and Maass. Oxford, 6 vols., 1855-88.

And what do we find in this? We find, of course, verbal explanation in

floods, in oceans, sometimes of the most valueless, often of the most

valuable kind. We find laborious comment on etymology (not quite so

often valuable as eccentric), on grammar (invaluable often), on

mythology, &c., &c., giving us what, whether it be artistically worthy

or worthless, we often could not otherwise by any possibility know. We

get the most painstaking, if not always the most illuminative or

illuminated, discussions of the poet’s meaning, handled simply, handled

allegorically, handled “this way, that way, which way you please.” Not

seldom, as elsewhere (in Eustathius, for instance), we get certain

references to Figures and the technical rules of Rhetoric, which touch

the outer skirts, the fringes, of literary criticism itself. But of that

criticism, as represented even in Dionysius, much more in Longinus, the

allowance is astonishingly small. You may read page after page, volume

after volume, and find absolutely nothing, or next to nothing, of the

sort. Take, for instance, the two volumes of Scholia on the _Odyssey_,

as published by Dindorf—on the _Odyssey_, the very touchstone of all

Greek literature for literary criticism, and one which proves the gold

in Longinus at the very moment that it shows what we may think not so

golden in him. You turn and turn. Besides the matter classified above, a

great many extremely valuable, or at worst more or less curious,

thoughts meet you. You will be informed (on Od. ii. 99) that “It is

natural to women to dislike the parents of their husbands”; on vi. 137,

that “All youth is fearful because of its want of experience, but

especially female youth.” You will find examples of the puerile

quibbling of Zoilus, such as that it was unlikely that exactly six

sailors were taken from each ship; with the common-sense, if not much

less puerile, retort that it is difficult to get ἑβδομήκοντα δύο into

verse. But such things are no great windfall; and such others as the

observation, at 391 of the same book, on the poet’s wonderful faculty

and daring in making the sound suit the sense, and of showing in that

sound “all the sorrow of the sight,” are very rare. They still more

rarely soar above observations on special points, or reach criticism of

general handling of the relations of one part of the story to another,

of its pervading poetical quality and charm. For one note, vol. i. p.

425, a little farther on, as to the variety and aptness of the Homeric

compound epithets for beasts, we shall find pages and sheets of mere

trifling. And when we get a more thoughtful examination (see, for

instance, that given as apparently Porphyry’s in the Appendix, ii. 789,

on the conduct of Ulysses in selecting the persons to whom he shall

first reveal himself), it strikes one at once that these, like the

comments above cited on the _Ajax_, are comments on the _action_, on the

dramatic structure, and not on the literary execution.

It is the same—it is perhaps even more the same—if we turn to the

_Iliad_. The famous first words elicit naturally a good deal[84] of

comment, which has some promise. Why did he begin with “wrath,” which is

an ill-sounding word? For two reasons. First, that he might purify the

corresponding part of the souls of his readers by the passions, &c.

Secondly, that he might give his “praises of the Greeks” greater

verisimilitude. Besides, this was the practical subject with which he

was first to deal as in a kind of tragic prologue. Then there is an odd

gradation of the states of wrath itself, from ὀργὴ to μῆνις. Next, an

inquiry why the poet begins with the end of the war, and so forth. This,

of course, is literary criticism of a sort, but on thin and threadbare

lines enough; and there is not very much even of this. The scholiasts

are far more at home with accentuation and punctuation; with the endless

question of _athetesis_ (or blackmarking, as spurious); with such

technical ticketings as at i. 366: “The trope is _anakephalaiosis_.[85]

There are four kinds of narrative—homiletic, apangeltic, hypostatic,[86]

and mixed”; or with such curiously unintelligent attempts to pin down

poetic beauty as the note at i. 477 on ῥοδοδάκτυλος as a synecdoche, in

which, by the way, even the colour-scheme seems to be misunderstood.

Footnote 84:

See Dindorf’s collection, enlarged with variants at the beginning of

vol. v. by Maass.

Footnote 85:

_I.e._, “recapitulation.”

Footnote 86:

_I.e._, “in the nature of conversational address, regular history, or

argument.” But it is often very difficult to translate these

rhetorical terms exactly. _Hypostasis_ in particular is even more

elusive in rhetoric than in theology.

At the close of these remarks on the Scholiasts I must enter in a fresh

form the _caveat_ which has perhaps been wearisomely iterated, but which

it is better to repeat too often than to suppress even in a single place

where its omission might mislead. I am not finding fault with these

laborious and invaluable persons for not doing what they had not the

least intention to do. I am not (Heaven forbid!) arguing for any

superiority in the modern critic over the ancient. I am only

endeavouring to show that the subjects to which modern literary

critics—who, as it seems to me, stick to their business most closely,

and abstain most from metabasis ἐς ἄλλο γένος—pay most attention, were

precisely those to which ancient critics, as a matter of fact, paid

least. And this it is not only the right but the duty of the historian

to point out.

Nor will it, I trust, while we are thus examining Miscellanea, be

considered frivolous or superfluous to examine [Sidenote: _The Literary

Epigrams of the Anthology._] that vast mass of information on Greek life

and thought after the Golden Age which is called the _Greek

Anthology_,[87] to see whether it can afford us any light. In this mass,

with its thousands of articles ranging from exquisite to contemptible in

actual literary quality, the range of subject is notoriously as wide as

that of merit. The devotees of the Minor Muses of Hellas will “rhyme,”

as we should say, anything from a riddle and an arithmetical conundrum,

to Myron’s cow and the complimentary statues to the latest fashionable

athlete. It would be odd, therefore, if books and authors escaped or

were ignored, and they duly appear. In the battalions of _adespota_,

besides a stray versification[88] of the rules for making iambics, and a

wail[89] from some grammarian unnamed that he cannot write as well as

Palladius or Palladas, we come to a considerable body[90] of literary

epigrams arranged, by some one or other of the numerous ancient editors

of the _Anthology_, in vaguely chronological order of subject. First, as

in duty bound, come Linus and Orpheus, then a considerable batch on

Homer, and then the long succession of poets and philosophers,

dramatists and historians, to follow. For the most part, of course, the

epigrams contain generalities and commonplaces, but with more or less of

the neatness and prettiness that we associate with the very name of the

_Anthology_; sometimes they go a little closer to the matter, as in the

piece (523 of Jacobs) on Erinna’s much-praised “Distaff.” As we have

only five[91] (and those not consecutive) out of the three hundred

verses which this girl of nineteen years composed, it would be rash as

well as unkind to question the judgment of the epigrammatist that they

are “equal to Homer.” But it may safely be said that the judgment itself

is in a rudimentary style of criticism. It is natural, but rather

“tell-tale,” that the critic-poets always, when they can, take some

non-literary point—Anacreon’s fondness for wine, the equality in number

of the Muses and the books of Herodotus, the supposed physical and moral

shortcomings of Aristotle, and the like. But sometimes they go higher.

There is plenty of spirit and sense in the epigram on Panætius for

pronouncing the _Phædo_ spurious,—as is well known, this idlest of

critical debauches was at least as great a favourite with the ancients

as with the moderns (548). Sometimes we get valuable testimony as to

popular judgments—the unfeigned admiration which was felt for Menander,

though the sounder critics might put him below Aristophanes; the mighty

repute of Aristides of Smyrna (see p. 113) who is pretty certainly _not_

the Aristides congratulated ironically in another epigram as never

having less than seven auditors—the four walls of the room, and the

three benches in it. Perhaps Claudian is a little overparted with the

“mind of Virgil and the Muse of Homer.” But all decadences are given to

exaggeration of this kind; and the reviews of the closing years of the

nineteenth century in England will furnish much more extravagant

instances of comparison.

Footnote 87:

I use the ed. of Jacobs, Leipsic, 1794, 10 vols. (nominally 3 vols. of

Commentary, in 7 parts, 4 vols. of text, and 1 of Indices).

Footnote 88:

Ep. Adesp., 454, ed. cit., Text, iv. 214.

Footnote 89:

Ibid., Ep. 468, p. 218.

Footnote 90:

Ibid., p. 221 _sq._

Footnote 91:

_V._ Bergk, _Poet. Lyr._, iii. 143.

The work of known, or at least named, individuals is less noteworthy in

bulk, and not much more so in kind and degree. The right happy industry

of Meleager appears to have helped in preserving for us no small

proportion of the minor work of the great men of old. But his own

quintessenced and not seldom charming pen is devoted to subjects always

less solemn, and sometimes very much less worthy, than literature. These

elders themselves (as indeed we should expect) meddle with literature

but rarely; while their successors, the early Alexandrians, are less

copious than we might have expected. Simmias of Thebes (perhaps not the

same who outraged[92] the feelings of neo-classic critics, from Addison

downwards, two thousand years later, by composing verse-eggs and

-hatchets) has left us a couple of elegant and regular, though rather

vague and slight, epigrams on Sophocles;[93] Philiscus of Miletus, who

was at least old enough to be a pupil of Isocrates, a pompous eulogium

of Lysias;[94] while no less a person than Thucydides has the credit of

one[95] on the Third Tragedian, which if extravagant in tone is neat in

expression. Of the compliments[96] to Aristophanes and Sappho, which are

similarly attributed to Plato, the former, with its consecration of the

soul of the great comic poet as the _temenos_ of the Graces, is far the

better. But the nearest approach to literature among the verses

attributed to Plato’s mightiest rival is a quaint bundle (no small

one)[97] of epitaphs on the Homeric heroes. Of course these attributions

are in all cases very doubtful, and possibly not in a single one

correct; but the fact of them for literary history remains the same.

Footnote 92:

He is generally called Simmias the _Rhodian_. But some speak of the

two as identical.

Footnote 93:

Ibid., i. 100.

Footnote 94:

Ibid., i. 101.

Footnote 95:

Ibid., i. 102.

Footnote 96:

Ibid., i. 102, 103.

Footnote 97:

Ibid., i. 111-117. There are 48 of them. Aristotle had versatility

enough to do them, but they do not _read_ like him.

If we turn to others, we shall draw some of the most flourishing coverts

in vain, but find something elsewhere. Erycius of Cyzicus[98] has a

spirited retort to an insulter of Homer, and a generous eulogium of

Sophocles—it is noteworthy that these two most unite the Anthological,

as the general, suffrage. Palladas handles Homer’s dealings with

women,[99] elsewhere[100] jests ruefully about having to sell his books,

even Callimachus and Pindar, and moralises[101] the story of Circe,

rather stupidly, but in a fashion for which he might find only too many

compurgators in antiquity. Pollianus[102] rallies (not disagreeably) the

stealers of Homeric tags and phrases; and a certain Cyrus

accomplishes[103] a mild couplet to complete his own witty conceit of

erecting a statue of Pindar at a bath. The long and curious poem[104] of

Christodorus Coptites on the statues in the Gymnasium of Zeuxippus

naturally has a great many literary allusions. Agathias—a somewhat major

star than most of these, and one whose pursuits earned him the special

surname of Scholasticus—has, so far as I remember, only two literary

epigrams[105] on statues of Æsop and Plutarch. Another “Scholasticus,”

scarcely distinguished more by the name of Thomas, announces that he

has three “stars in rhetoric”—Demosthenes, Aristides, and

Thucydides[106]—praising especially the pains of the first, but seeming

actually to prefer the two latter. Leon, the philosopher, has a little

handful[107] of epigrams on books, chiefly of science and philosophy,

and a Homeric cento not more respectable than such things usually are.

Footnote 98:

Ibid., iii. 12.

Footnote 99:

Ibid., iii. 117.

Footnote 100:

Ibid., iii. 124.

Footnote 101:

Ibid., iii. 137.

Footnote 102:

Ibid., iii. 146.

Footnote 103:

Ibid., iii. 160.

Footnote 104:

Ibid., iii. 161-177.

Footnote 105:

Ibid., iv. 16.

Footnote 106:

Ibid., iv. 95.

Footnote 107:

Ibid., iv. 97-100.

The great name of Theocritus is attached[108] to pieces, not inelegant

but very distinctly _banal_, on Anacreon, Epicharmus, Archilochus,

Hipponax; and that of the lesser Alcæus (not the great one of Mitylene,

but the much lesser Messenian) to some praises of Homer,[109] of

Hesiod,[110] and again of Hipponax. Dioscorides[111] extols Sappho,

defends the much-injured Philænis against those who (to judge from

confirmatory testimony to the same effect elsewhere) played upon her the

same ignoble trick by which a certain Frenchman, in days nearer our own,

tried to blast the fair fame of Luisa Sigea of Toledo. He is

complimentarily orthodox as to Sophocles, but not much less

complimentary to Sositheus, of whom we know little, and to Macho, of

whom, thanks to Athenæus, we know that he exercised his wits upon

putting naughty anecdotes into uncommonly pedestrian verse. An epigram

of the Grammarian Crates[112] refers to the controversy on the

respective merits of Chœrilus, Antimachus, and Homer, and would have

been very welcome if it had given us some information on that matter;

but as it is, the subject is a mere pretext to enable Crates to “talk

greasily.” Antipater of Sidon,[113] starting from the childish debate

about the birthplace of Homer, turns it into something better by his

conclusion—

“Thy country is great Heaven: there was to thee

No mortal mother, but Calliope”;

and he subsequently celebrates Sappho, “Erinna of few verses,” and

Pindar, returning to the same subjects (except Erinna) in another batch,

and adding a group on Anacreon (who, as fertile in commonplaces, is a

favourite subject of the Anthologians), Stesichorus, and Ibycus.

Footnote 108:

i. 98.

Footnote 109:

i. 238.

Footnote 110:

i. 241.

Footnote 111:

i. 250-252.

At least three epigrams of a different sort rather make us regret that

there are not more of the same kind, instead of the iteration of stock

phrases. The first,[114] by Herodicus of Babylon, is a smart onslaught

on the “fry of Aristarchus,” the “mono-syllabists” who care for nothing

but ΣΦΙΝ and ΣΦΩιΝ and ΜΙΝ and ΝΙΝ. The second,[115] by Antiphanes,

hails the “busybody race” of grammarians who “dig up the roots of other

people’s muses,” with a great many more abusive but not quite

inappropriate epithets and comparisons. The third,[116] by Philippus, is

perhaps the best of the three, girding at the “whelps of Zenodotus” with

a kind of combination of the other two, which is very likely actual and

intentional. Philip (_v. infra_) was a careful student of the elders of

his craft. Antipater of Thessalonica[117] has quite a group of literary

epigrams. He celebrates the Nine Poetesses, takes part in the

Antimachus-Homer debate, refusing the Colophonian primacy, but granting

him second rank and the praise of rough vigour (“the Hammer on the anvil

of the Pierides”), &c., and honours Aristophanes. Homer once more

occupies Alpheus of Mitylene[118] and Antiphilus of Byzantium,[119]

while Philippus of Thessalonica[120] devotes a “pretty but slim”

comparison with flowers to the principal bards of the Anthology itself.

Footnote 112:

ii. 3.

Footnote 113:

ii. 18, _sq._

Footnote 114:

ii. 64.

Footnote 115:

ii. 189.

Footnote 116:

ii. 207.

Footnote 117:

ii. 101, 102.

Footnote 118:

ii. 116.

Footnote 119:

ii. 157.

Footnote 120:

ii. 194.

This same Philippus has also a not unhappy conceit[121] about Hipponax

bidding the usual passer-by at his tomb “not wake the sleeping wasp,

Whose shafts fly straight although his metres limp.” A pale addition to

the garland of Sophocles comes from the doubtless alien hand of

Stratyllius Flaccus,[122] and Hesiod supplies only a play on words to

the better artistry of Marcus Argentarius,[123] while the accident of

our order of reading—a genuine accident—finishes a volume, and the tale,

with the marvellously lame and only epigram of a certain Pinytus[124] on

no less a person than Sappho.

Footnote 121:

ii. 219.

Footnote 122:

ii. 240.

Footnote 123:

ii. 244.

Footnote 124:

ii. 264.

A very thankless wretch would he be who was not grateful for any

legitimate excuse to wander once more through the length and breadth of

the enchanted gardens of the Anthology. But the reperusal can only

strengthen the opinion already formed that on the actual “evaluation of

π” in criticism the Greek mind, whether wisely or unwisely, was not

strongly set. Nothing can be clearer than that the forms, the range, the

etiquette, so to speak, of the compositions which are here grouped,

invited criticism in the graver way as thorough as that which Ben Jonson

gives to Shakespeare, Camden, and a dozen others; in the lighter as

sharp, and at the same time as piercing, as that of Piron on La

Chaussée. But it was not the mode, and they were not in the vein. With

rare exceptions they obeyed the classical principle of taking the

accepted, the obvious, the orthodox, and dressing it up in their best

way. It by no means follows that they were not right; but it does follow

that they leave us a little unsatisfied. To tell us that Homer is great,

Sappho lofty, Sophocles perfect, Aristophanes witty, is (to use the old

comparison of George Gascoigne) to praise the “crystal eye” and the

“cherry lip” of any gentle-woman. And so we may turn to the division of

Greek literature most opposite to the Anthology itself.

Before considering in some, at least, representative detail the vast and

arid province of the technical Greek Rhetoric, it may be [Sidenote: _The

Rhetoric of the Schools._] well, or rather is absolutely necessary, to

resume the consideration of what Rhetoric really meant. As we have seen,

it was at the beginning a strictly practical Art of Persuasion by

Oratory; and if it tended to embrace and absorb all or most other arts

and sciences, this was partly because the orator would certainly have to

deal with many, and might have to deal with all, of these, partly

because it was always more or less a political art, an art of public

business. For the Greek politician, like others, was expected to be a

Jack-of-all-trades.

But even while this practical object continued, the Greek passion for

abstracting and refining tended to turn practice into theory, while the

Greek love of sport, competition, public display, tended further to turn

this theory into the code of a very elaborate game. Obviously enough, as

the practical importance of oratory declined, the technical and

“sporting” interest of Rhetoric got more and more the upper hand.

Rhetoricians specialised their terminology, multiplied their

classifications, and drew their rules ever finer and finer, just as

croquet-players narrow their hoops and bulge out their balls, just as

whist-players split and wire-draw the broad general principles of the

play of Deschapelles and Clay into “American leads,” and an endless

reverberation of “calls” and “echoes.” We possess a very large, and a

more curious than interesting, collection of the technical writings of

this half craft, half sport, and a collection, rather less in

proportion, but a little more interesting, of examples of the finished

handiwork or game. To both of these we must now turn, premising that the

technical part has not very much, and the finished examples surprisingly

little, to furnish to the stricter literature of our subject. Why, then,

do we deal with it? Because even abused Rhetoric is always Literary

Criticism in a more or less degraded and disguised condition. The

degradation can be remedied, the disguise thrown off, whenever the hour

and the man arrive. Rhetoric, in her worst moods, keeps the tools ready,

keeps them almost too sharply ground, if she does not put them to the

right use.

As Rhetoric preserved her authority not merely to the latest classical

times but right through the Middle Ages, and even at [Sidenote: _Its

documents._] the close of the latter escaped, at the cost only of some

minor changes and additions, the decay which fell upon the rest of

Scholastic learning, it is not surprising that the _Rhetores Græci_

received early attention from the young art of Printing. Had not Aldus,

in 1508-1509, collected them in two folio volumes, it is perhaps rather

unlikely that we should have had any more modern collections at all. For

technical Rhetoric fell into even more disfavour than Logic with the

rise of physical science and materialist philosophy in the seventeenth

century; and though, in some applied senses of the word, it has never

fallen into complete disuse, it has never, as Logic has, recovered

position in its stricter and more formal forms. It was therefore no

small feat, even of German industry, when, some seventy years ago,

Christian Walz of Tübingen undertook a new edition,[125] which, though

some additions and improvements have since been made by Spengel[126] and

others, remains the main standard and thesaurus. Its ten stout volumes,

of some seven thousand closely printed pages, have probably been read

through, and line by line, by hardly a single person for each decade of

the seven during which it has been before the world. For not only is the

bulk enormous, but the matter is extremely technical; there is endless

repetition, commentaries on commentaries on commentaries forming no

small part of the whole, while the minute definition and special

terminology[127] require extremely careful reading. I shall not pretend

to have read every word of it myself; but I have read a very great deal

of it, and everything that follows can be guaranteed as drawn at first

hand.

Footnote 125:

9 vols. (really 10, vol. vii. being in two large parts), Stuttgart,

Tübingen, London and Paris, 1832-36.

Footnote 126:

Spengel’s handy collection (3 vols., 4 parts), which has now been for

some years in process of re-editing in the _Bibliotheca Teubneriana_

by Römer and Hammer, omits the scholia on Hermogenes, but includes

divers all-important, if elsewhere accessible, texts, such as

Aristotle and Longinus, and adds some minor things.

Footnote 127:

It is not, I hope, illiberal to remark that our excellent “Liddell &

Scott” is perhaps more to seek in rhetorical terminology than anywhere

else. (At least it certainly was so up to the 7th or penultimate

edition: I have not yet worked with that of 1896.) Ernesti’s _Lexicon

Technologiæ Græcorum Rhetoricæ_ (Leipsic, 1795) is, for all its 105

years, still almost indispensable to the student, more so even than

the corresponding and somewhat younger Latin volume (Leipsic, 1797).

Even these fail sometimes.

The original treatises of the collection form its smallest part, and

none of them is very early; indeed, of the earlier formal Rhetoric, as

has been said, Aristotle is almost our only representative, though,

luckily, he is worth all the others. If the περὶ ἑρμηνείας, or _De

Interpretatione_, which goes by the name of Demetrius, had been rightly

referred (in accordance with nearly all the MSS., as far as the name

goes, and with the assent of so distinguished and acute a scholar as

Petrus Victorius in regard to the person) to Demetrius of Phalerus,—the

Athenian statesman and orator of the latter half of the fourth century

B.C., the antagonist of his namesake the City-Taker and lover of Lamia,

the scholar of Theophrastus, the schoolfellow of Menander, the probable

consulting founder of the Alexandrian library—its interest of authorship

would be only inferior to that of the work of the greatest writers. But

the allusions and citations in the treatise itself (unless we suppose it

to have been edited and interpolated to an extent such as to make it

useless as a document) are such as to put this attribution out of the

question. And while Dionysius and others have been put forward as

possible claimants, there seems no reason to doubt that the most

probable author is to be found in some Alexandrian grammarian or sophist

of the name of Demetrius (perhaps the one actually named by Diogenes

Laertius as having written rhetorical treatises), who may have lived

under the Antonines. There is, therefore, no reason for disturbing

Walz’s actual order.[128]

Footnote 128:

He does not give, but Spengel does, the _Rhetoric to Alexander_ (v.

_sup._, p. 17 _note_), attributed to Anaximenes; and the same is the

case with a short fragment, Περὶ ἐρωτήσεως καὶ ἀποκρίσεως, which is an

excursus on Arist., _Rhet._, iii. 18. It is purely _barristerial_.

His first volume is composed of divers more or less original treatises,

which are of the kind called προγυμνάσματα, “Preliminary Exercises,” and

which in most cases actually bear that title. The first is by the famous

Hermogenes (_ob._ _c._ 170 A.D.), the Phœnix of rhetoricians pure and

simple, who became a master at fifteen and an idiot at five-and-twenty,

whose “heart was covered with hair,” and whose works not only followed

him, but were followed by libraries-full of scholiasts and commentators.

The next, itself a sort of adaptation of Hermogenes, is by Aphthonius of

Antioch, a teacher of the beginning of the fourth century A.D., who had

the rather curious good fortune not merely to secure a long vogue in the

late classical ages, but to be current in the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries. Theon, an Alexandrian, but not the father of Hypatia,

follows, with the less-known names of Nicolas, Nicephorus, Adrian,

Severus, and the better known George Pachymeres, as well as another

collection by an anonym. Of these, the works attributed to Adrian and

Severus are not called προγυμνάσματα, but in the first case μελέται, in

the second διηγήματα καὶ ἠθοποΐαι.[129] The most famous and popular of

the sets, those of Hermogenes and Aphthonius, are very short, and, like

that of Georgius Pachymeres, do not exceed fifty pages. The others are

longer, and in the case of the work of Nicolas, some three times as

long.

Footnote 129:

_Meletæ_ are properly “complete declamations,” not, as are the

_Progymnasmata_, exercises in _parts_ of oratory, The others are some

of these parts only.

The opening of the Progymnasmata of Hermogenes is a curious and slightly

bewildering mixture of definition, literary [Sidenote: _The_

Progymnasmata _of Hermogenes_.] history, and the kind of “Manual for

Young Writers” (_lege_ orators), which, after long disuse, has recently

begun to be prepared for the aspiring journalist. The first chapter is

on Fables. They are supposed to be good things for the young. They have

various authors and titles, but there is a tendency to give the name of

Æsop to all of them. They are not true to fact; but should be plausible,

and can be made so by suiting the action to the characters and making

the peacock stand for beauty and vanity, the fox for wisdom, the ape for

mimicry. Sometimes you should give them shortly, sometimes spin them

out. (Example given.) You may put them in different places of your

speech, and they will do instead of an actual example.

The second chapter is of Narration (διήγημα), which is distinguished

from Fable as being the story of something which has either actually

happened or is told as if it had. Homer and Herodotus are both

“narrators.” There are five kinds of it (one thinks of Polonius)—the

directly declaratory, the indirectly ditto, the elenchtic, the loose,

the periodic—with examples of each kind.[130] The first is good for

story, the second for debate, “the elenchtic [confuting] is rather for

elenchs,” and the loose for epilogues, as being pathetic.

Footnote 130:

This is an early example of the confusion and cross-division which has

infested formal Rhetoric to the present day. For the first three heads

are purely material, the last two grammatical-formal; so that, instead

of ranking side by side, _each_ of 1, 2, 3 should rank under _each_ of

4, 5. Cf. Professor Bain’s _Rhetoric_, vol. i., where similar

cross-division more than once occurs.

We might at very little expense of trouble, if at much of space, go

through the whole of the little treatise and show how the

hairy-hearted one of Tarsus deals in the same way with “Uses,”[131]

Maxims, Refutation and Confirmation, Commonplace, Encomium,

Comparison, Character-drawing,[132] Ecphrasis,[133] Thesis,[134] and

Introduction. But the examples given will suffice. Each chapter

consists of a definition, a division, sometimes very finely drawn, of

kinds, examples, and generally a scrap of advice as to how, when, and

where to introduce them.

Footnote 131:

χρεῖαι, rather “maxims” than “uses” in the theological sense.

Hermogenes exhausts his special gift in distinguishing them from the

more general maxim or γνώμη.

Footnote 132:

The ἠθοποΐια above referred to. It has a special reference to the

drawing-up of speeches suitable to such and such a character in such

and such a situation.

Footnote 133:

Description of the graphic and picturesque kind.

Footnote 134:

Subject or question in the wide sense.

The good and the evil of this kind of thing, as well as its special

bearings on literary criticism, are not difficult to discern. [Sidenote:

_Remarks on them._] It necessitates the narrowest and most accurate

investigation of the kinds and characteristics of literature, of

literary means, of “composition,” in the wide and the narrow sense. It

confers on apt students, besides the mere ability to play the special

game of artificial oratory, a great acuteness of analysis. It entirely

avoids, no doubt, the danger which is charged constantly, and sometimes

not without a certain justice, on the more æsthetic kind of literary

study and literary criticism—the danger of desultory chatter. It has, in

short, though to a less degree, the virtues of Formal Logic. And if the

subject of Education, and fresh nostrums in it, were not a weariness to

all intelligent mankind, one might say that not a few things in our

present curricula might with advantage be excluded to make room for a

course (with some due alterations) of Rhetoric according to Hermogenes.

But, at the same time, its own shortcomings and its own dangers are

equally obvious. The greatest of them—indeed one which in a manner

swallows up and contains within itself all the others—is the almost

irresistible temptation to regard literature as something according to

scheme and schedule, something that the pocket ivory rule of the

architect, and his neatly latticed paper, and a short handbook like this

before us, will enable you to despatch and dispose of. Acute as are the

divisions and definitions, they are dead things; and nothing that

imitates and follows them can be really alive.

Aphthonius adopts the same divisions of Progymnasmata, save that he

makes them fourteen instead of twelve, by [Sidenote: _Aphthonius._]

separating ἀνασκευὴ [rebutting] from κατασκευὴ [confirming], and adding

a section on Blame. His object was evidently to make even the

business-like handling of his predecessor more precise still; and the

long and revived popularity which, as has been said, he achieved, was

not an undue reward for one of the most craftsmanlike crambooks that

ever deserved the encomium of the epithet and the discredit of the noun.

Aphthonius substitutes for the simple heading “Of Myth,” &c.,

“_Definition_ of Myth,” &c.; and though he still keeps his sections very

short, he manages, instead of the rather brachygraphic indication of

examples in the text, to give an appendix of complete if miniature

pattern at the end of each section—a fable of the ants and grasshoppers,

urging youth to industry, for the first; the story of the rose and its

acquiring redness from the blood of Aphrodite when she struck her foot

against its thorns in trying to shield Adonis from Ares, for the second;

and so on. In every respect, Aphthonius has studied clearness, and he

has certainly achieved it. If it were not for the dangers of the whole

method, and especially that greatest one, of encouraging the mistake of

classification for fact, terms for things, orderly reference to a

schedule for æsthetic appreciation, he would deserve very hearty

applause. And even as it is, one could, as has been said above, see the

study which he facilitates substituted for any one of at least a dozen

subjects of our modern overcrowded curriculum with a great deal of

equanimity. Short as the piece is, some of the examples, such as the

encomia of Thucydides and of Wisdom, are compositions of considerable

finish. But it is significant that in the first there is, strictly

speaking, no literary criticism at all, and that even the inevitable

comparison with Herodotus is poorly shuffled off with the stock reproach

that Herodotus writes to please, Thucydides to speak the truth.

Theon, with greater space at his command, employs a different method. It

is uncertain whether he preceded or followed [Sidenote: _Theon._]

Aphthonius; but the former theory is favoured by the fact that he, like

Hermogenes, has twelve subjects only, those which Aphthonius put asunder

being still united. He begins with a general disquisition on, and

encomium of, the Progymnasmata, widening them somewhat, so as to bring

in Figures to some extent, but also describing some of these as

“contentious” or “disputed.” Then he has a rather curious chapter,

nearer to our special purpose than usual, showing how, not merely the

great orators, but the great writers of old, used these forms, or rather

things which can be brought under these forms, citing the famous speech

of Sophocles as to his emancipation from love in the _Republic_, the

fable of the flute-player in Herodotus, others in other historians, and

a very great many more things, not a few of which are lost. This

enumeration is not only interesting as pointing to these _desiderata_,

but as showing how unhappy the Greek was unless he could arrange and

classify and ticket, as well as, distinguish and enjoy, the parts and

characteristics of literature. The spirit is not dead yet: it has

prompted a much-respected living author on Rhetoric to describe _In

Memoriam_ as “a combined Hyperbole of Affection and Sorrow.” And this

may undoubtedly be said in its favour, that its exercise does really

require and promote a certain intellectual alertness and activity. But

the question is, Do this alertness and this activity exert themselves in

actual progress, or in mere marking-time? Is the comprehension (one can

hardly even ask Is the enjoyment) of _In Memoriam_ furthered by its

orderly arrangement in the case generally labelled “Hyperbole,” and in

the compartment labelled “Combined Hyperboles,” and in the further

pigeon-hole labelled “Of Affection and Sorrow”? Is it really important

to decide whether Sophocles’s variation on “sour grapes” is a χρεία or

an apophthegm, and which are the most remarkable examples of διήγημα in

the orators and the historians respectively? Such things may appear to

some specially and fatally to underlie the Platonic curse on the

appearance of knowledge without the reality. But they have, as we see,

very strong and long prescription, and there are still some who bitterly

resent the exclusion of them from the teaching, not merely of technical

Rhetoric, but of literature—who regard a system of “leaden rules,” of

individual appreciation without classes and compartments and

indorsements, as dilettante, unscientific (which it would certainly

allow itself to be), and effeminate. Between the two, opinion, a little

assisted by Logic and History, must be left to decide.

Theon’s handling of the Progymnasmata (which he often speaks of without

the _pro_) is, as has been said, much fuller than those of Hermogenes

and Aphthonius. He does not, like the latter of these, give a regular

formal pattern of each kind; but he has a great many illustrative

references to literature, and he has a good deal of discussion on what

may be called the philosophy of the several kinds. Nor is it

unnoteworthy that in dealing with Commonplace he drops the “common,”

substitutes _prosopopœia_ for _ethopœia_, and introduces the

curious new heading of “Law.” On the whole, Theon is more “for thoughts”

than either of his forerunners;[135] he might profit a clever boy more,

and he has much more numerous and deeper glimmerings of insight into the

purely critical side of the matter. But he lacks system, and this, in

dealing with a subject which is systematic or nothing, is a drawback.

Footnote 135:

Speaking of Walz’s order: I have little doubt myself that he preceded

Aphthonius in time.

There was a rhetorical Nicolaus (indeed the name was very common) who

was a student of Proclus; but the author of the [Sidenote: _Nicolaus._]

_Progymnasmata_ we possess seems to have flourished later, under the

Emperor Leo and after him. For some reason or none, MSS. of him seem to

be specially found at Oxford. They are merely examples, several of each

kind, and sometimes minutely subdivided, there being, for instance,

separate patterns of mixed, unmixed, logical, and practical “Use.” They

form, in fact, a curious bundle, and by no means a very small one, of

partial declamations in common form, the examples of _Ethopœia_ being

especially remarkable: “What sort of things Niobe would say,” “What

Menœceus the patriotic suicide,” “What Cassandra at the sight of the

horse,” &c. No less than fourteen in all are given.

This is also the principle of the _Progymnasmata_ of Nicephorus

Basilicus, a notary (not the son-in-law chronicled by [Sidenote:

_Nicephorus._] Scott) of Alexius Comnenus, who gives no less than

three-and-twenty Ethopœiæ on subjects Pagan and Christian. In fact,

these two collections, which together fill some two hundred and fifty

well-packed pages, may be regarded rather as rhetorical reading-books,

designedly intended to possess a certain interest, than as anything

else. Familiarity with them would be likely to produce much the same

sort of literary facility, and in a sense “correctness,” as that which

we find in the minor French writers of the eighteenth century. It could,

after mere childhood (when it might insensibly inculcate some good

principles and some sound models), have little other good effect.

The few μελέται of Adrianus, the successor and funeral eulogist of

Herodes Atticus, are whole declamations, not [Sidenote: _Minors._]

brought under any of the heads. The _Diegemata_ and _Ethopœiæ_ of

Severus, after what has been said of these kinds, will need no special

characterisation; and the _Progymnasmata_ of George Pachymeres (who was

nearly contemporary with Dante) and of the Anonymus are, like so many of

the others, pure examples, indeed (as the former are well called in one

MS.) _Meletæ_ on the Progymnasmata themselves.

No great resumption or amplification of the scattered comments already

made on these works can be necessary. They form a by no means

contemptible group of "Composition [Sidenote: _General remarks on the

Progymnasmata._] books," creditably distinguished from some more modern

examples of the same kind by being busy with something better than mere

grammar, but not as a rule showing any of that conception of style which

is visible as early as Dionysius, distinct in Quintilian, and present in

a form at once vigorous and exquisite in Longinus. They are by no means

ill calculated to excite an interest in literature, and even to

facilitate the production, in not contemptible form, of certain kinds of

it. But there is upon all of them the curse of beginning at the wrong

end—of constructing an elaborate skeleton system of forms, and kinds,

and sub-kinds, and then classifying literature under these, instead of

beginning with the literature, separating the good from the bad, and

examining, as far as may be possible, the sources of goodness and

badness. A man trained in them would have many advantages over our

heaven-born, but hardly even earth-instructed, reviewers and students of

literature. But he would be very apt to miss the finer touches, to lose

the nobler gusts, of literature; and he would be especially disposed

towards that worst disease of criticism, so often manifested in its

history, which leads men to ignore, or even blaspheme, great work,

because it refuses to be classified, or to obey the arbitrary rules

which have been foisted into, or encrusted upon, the classification.

Not from such a point of view did the still later teachers, who set

themselves to comment on the comment of Hermogenes [Sidenote: _The

Commentaries on them._] and Aphthonius, regard their authorities. The

second volume of Walz—a stout one of nearly seven hundred pages—is

entirely occupied with scholia on Aphthonius alone, at the rate, that is

to say, of about fourteen pages of margent to one of text. This flood of

words about words has been too much for the patience even of the editor,

who gives specimens only of some, and in just wrath labels one as “a

futile opuscule botched together with utter stupidity.” Much, indeed, is

of the usual kind which we associate with _scholia_—verbal

interpretation, sometimes not useless, but as a rule singularly

pedestrian and uninspired, introduced with a monotonous rattle of

_clichés_ and catchwords. But there are also better things, and the

so-called “Homilies” of Doxopater, besides being of very considerable

bulk (they fill some four hundred pages, not of mere scrappy annotation

but of substantive commentary), attest the intelligence as well as the

industry of their author, a Byzantine of the eleventh century. But they

are (necessarily, no doubt) cribbed and cabined by the circumscriptions

of their text.